


Your words are ink

by Aethelar



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Like, M/M, So Much Snark, Soulmates, but also serious plot stuff, humour and snark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-02 19:08:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8679943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar
Summary: Percival Graves has just spent several weeks in captivity fighting for his life. He's now got to deal with the aftermath of Grindelwald's deception and the webs of an underground crime ring that seems to cover the whole goddam city. The last thing he has time for is some ridiculous romantic drivel about soulmates so no, no thank you, he's not interested.
All the same though if Newt could just stay out of danger for one tiny second - just one! - then that'd be grand, because Graves is too busy to keep saving his life. Dammit.





	1. This is not Graves' day

**Author's Note:**

> ... I can't help it. I ship them.
> 
> I blame Graves' coat.
> 
> Also, come say hi to me / send me things to write at [tumblr](http://aethelar.tumblr.com)!

Everyone has a soulmate. Some people have two. In rare cases, people have three, though those aren't usually publicised so much. However, the fact remains that everyone has at least one perfect match, even someone as hard and married to his work as Percival Graves.

Graves himself has never paid much attention to the idea. Soulmates are usually discussed with tittering giggles and longing sighs, or half hidden smiles and soft fondness. It's the classic story, the timeless romance, the one thing that will always go right in someone's life.

Graves has seen too much of the worst of humanity to believe in that. He deals with criminals, murderers, and the scum of society on an almost daily basis. He spends hours in interrogation rooms with poor besotted fools trying to defend their soulmates, as if the fact that someone is loved excuses the atrocities they commit. He's seen people grimly hanging on to a relationship that's destroying them because their soulmarks are shackles they can't escape, and he's seen people pushed beyond the limit just turn around and... break.

There's no other way to describe it, what happens to a person when they kill their soulmate. They break. Souls are not made to withstand that kind of trauma, and the empty shells that Graves and his aurors arrest are no more people than the corpses he finds them kneeling over. The death penalty, he thinks, is a kindness in these cases.

So no. Graves doesn't go in for that fairytale happy ending crap. The ink that winds around his wrist is no more interesting than the pattern of stubble he shaves off his chin each morning. He hasn't memorised the first words his supposedly perfect other half will say to him, nor has he spent hours idly tracing the messy scrawl with his fingers to learn the loops and curves of his soulmate's handwriting. He doesn't cover the words with a cuff like so many people have started to do, nor hide them more subtly under a glamour charm or an enchanted watch. He just ignores them.

And if he ever meets his soulmate, he'll just ignore them as well. In Graves' mind, it's as simple as that.  
  


* * *

  
"Are you people contractually obliged to create paperwork?" Newt complained. He was sitting on the corner of Tina's desk, shoulders hunched as he rested his weight on his hands and feet swinging like an impatient child. With an irritated huff, Tina added a cushioning charm to the wood so that his heels stopped scuffing the polish.

"If you'd registered everything before you arrived I wouldn't have to do it all for you now," she said without sympathy. Her quill hovered over the next part of the form with something like dread. "Have you, or has anyone you've been in close contact with, been exposed to dangerous dark items, creatures or curses in the six months prior to entering New York?" she read aloud.

"No," Newt lied easily. Or maybe it wasn't a lie - he had a definition of 'dangerous' that didn't quite match that found in appendix 3b, subsection iv. "And that doesn't actually make less paperwork, it just spreads it out over a longer time period which might even be worse."

"Yes, but at least I wouldn't be the one dealing with it. When were you in Sudan?"

He paused on that, a flicker of an old hurt flashing across his face, and Tina regretted having to ask. "I'm sorry," she said, gentling her tone. "But Graves - Grindelwald - recorded the obscurial you found, and they'll flag that as a dark magic encounter."

Newt set his jaw mulishly. "They shouldn't," he groused. "It's completely harmless in its bubble. And it's not dark magic anyway, it's just - it's accidental magic. Condensed down and given semi-sentience by repressed feelings. Not dark."

Tina sighed. "I know, Newt. But - the paperwork. I just need something to put down on the paperwork." And, because she did know, and because she also knew that the aurors would be overreacting in the wake of Credence's - in the wake of the incident, she added, "Standard quarantine period for unknowns is thirteen weeks. If the magic has remained stable for that duration, it's assumed safe to be released into competent care."

She kept her gaze focussed squarely on the customs forms. Technically, it was freely known information, and  _technically_  sharing freely known information didn't count as aiding a suspect in evading the law. Technically.

Ethically she should turn in her newly instated auror badge and have a long talk with herself about moral choices and recording falsehoods on official documentation, but if she was being the truly law-abiding auror she claimed to be then she'd have to report Queenie for continued fraternisation with a no-maj, Jacob for somehow evading the city-wide obliviate (that would probably come back to Queenie as well, actually), Newt for giving a no-maj a case full of clearly magical occamy egg shells _to use as collateral at a no-mag bank are you kidding me_ , Newt for half the animals in his pocket zoo that he steadfastly wasn't admitting to bringing into New York, Newt for -

She'd have to report Newt for a lot of things which she didn't feel like doing. So. Technicalities were fine.

"Am I competent care?" Newt asked. Tina buried a somewhat hysterical giggle and seriously considered spelling the forms to complete themselves without her. In _mermish_.

"Yes, Newt, you're competent care."

He was silent for a second, something like pride and something like happiness warring on his face. It would forever remain a mystery how Tina could have thought the goof was a threat to New York, seriously.

"Eight months ago," he finally said with a lopsided, if slightly sad, smile. "I was in Sudan eight months ago. And that's - that's actually when it was."

Eight months. Tina made an addendum note of the date of the obscurial's capture and made the executive decision to answer 'no' to the remaining five questions on the form.

"And that," she said, spelling the form dry with a flourish and sending it off to file itself, "is done. Welcome to New York, Mr Scamander, you're finally officially cleared. Congratulations."

There was a staccato rap at the open door.

"Miss Goldstein," Graves - the real Graves - said. He was haggard and thinner than he should be, his usually tanned skin pale and tinged grey. For all that, he'd lost nothing of his authority, and his gaze was sharp and hard. "If I might borrow Mr Scamander?" It was phrased as a question, but clearly wasn't one.

"Of course," she said, standing up from her chair. She glanced over at Newt, but he was fixedly looking at the door handle and his blank expression gave nothing away.

Graves nodded once in what might, in a gentler man, have been thanks. "Mr Scamander," he said pointedly, stepping aside and gesturing at the doorway.

Newt looked up, transferring his stare from the door handle to the window in the corridor over Graves' shoulder. His shoulders were tense and his feet had stopped swinging, and Tina had a sudden moment to wonder if he knew that Graves had been recovered after Grindelwald's capture.

"Are you going to give me the death sentence again?" Newt asked mildly, proving that he was a) probably aware that this was the real Graves, because who would ask that of an actual Dark Lord, and b) a little shit who would definitely ask that of an actual Dark Lord, who is Tina even trying to convince here.

Graves took a strangely long time to answer, enough that Tina had to suppress the urge to fidget nervously. Newt's question could, she supposed, be taken the wrong way, and Graves - evil doppelganger or not - wasn't a man to cross lightly.

"I assure you," Graves finally said with shaken forced calm, "I would rather your continued survival than your untimely death."

Newt weighed the words. He apparently found them acceptable and hopped down from Tina's desk, giving her one final jaunty wave as he left the room. She didn't wave an answer his goodbye, too distracted by the way that Graves swivelled in place to stare after him. He looked rattled. Off-kilter. Even more off-kilter than he'd looked when they'd received the distress call and found him, limping, half-dead and severely pissed off, out of a back-alley sewer.

It was strangely unnerving to see the unflappable man so... flapped.

"Sir?" she managed when he made no move to leave. His head snapped to her with alarming speed, expression closing down into his usual frown. He nodded, tugged the cuff of his left sleeve down to more firmly cover the tumble of dark ink encircling his wrist, and strode after Newt.

The cuff. Of his left sleeve. Over his wrist.

This was the first time Newt had met Graves, the real Graves, wasn't it?

Tina sat down heavily behind her chair and fervently hoped that she was reading things wrong.


	2. This continues to not be Graves' day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You people are lovely. Seriously.
> 
> Side note, this whole story is set in New York, a place which I have _never been_. My grand total of time spent is the US amounts to an 18 hour layover in an airport. Would anyone be able to help as my America guide?

 

Graves was silent during the walk. Newt kept himself one step behind, following where the other man led - he'd become familiar with the walk from the front door to dusty desk in the corner of the records room that Tina called an office over the past week or so, but the rest of MACUSA seemed to be laid out in a pointlessly confusing manner. The insistence on using vertical space in particular; even if magic made it as natural to walk up the side of the sharp-angled pillars as to walk along the obsidian corridors, it was frustratingly difficult to orientate oneself.

Graves' footsteps echoed, each stride measured and solid. Newt shuffle-stepped beside him, trying to catalogue the differences between this Graves and Grindelwald's interpretation. They held themselves with similar confidence and easy grace, though Newt wasn't sure if that was down to Grindelwald's good acting or to similar personalities. Exhaustion dragged on Graves' shoulders that hadn't been present before in Grindelwald-Graves (Grindelgraves?), but he held them resolutely square. His jaw was set, brows drawn low over dark eyes, the expression familiar in its form but harsher, somehow, than Grindelwald had ever managed.

Tina had insisted, still insisted, that Graves was the very embodiment of a good man, but Newt had to conclude that he didn't seem a particularly kind one.

They took a lift to the final floor, foregoing the gravity-charms that they'd used to walk this far. It was excessively modern, made more of gilded mirror than any other material, and the stark minimalism felt oddly out of place. Muggle, perhaps, or just the embodiment of an efficiency rarely seen in the wizarding world.

The doors melted into existence, a fourth mirror joining the other three to surround them. Graves' wand hovered over the panel to his right, but he made no move to touch it to the surface.

"What are your views on soulmates?" he said suddenly, the words at odds with the low voice that spoke them. Newt raised an eyebrow (both eyebrows, he'd never been very good at raising one) at the odd question.

"Is this part of immigration?" he asked hesitantly. "Do I need to declare my soulmate?"

Graves shot him a sharp look that Newt fought the urge to flinch from. "Have you found them?"

It wasn't a personal question, as such, but it was a bit presumptive. Newt tried to find something to focus on to stop his gaze from jumping around, but every surface of the lift was mirrored. Even the ceiling was mirrored - and oh, the floor was glass, how delightfully terrifying to see _quite_ how far down they could fall if the levitation charms failed.

Graves was still waiting for an answer.

"Hard to say," Newt said, deliberately careless. "But probably not." The precise letters tattooed into his skin weren't the most banal he'd seen (his father had had "Hello" on his wrist, of all things) but were hardly unique. He'd gone through a period in his youth of saying the most outrageous things to people he met so that at least his soulmate would be able to recognise him, but it had done little more than earn him a reputation for being odd. Odder.

If he'd been looking at Graves, perhaps he would have seen the wince the man wasn't quite able to suppress. As it was, Newt was fixated on the reflection of his topmost coat button, and missed it entirely.

Graves moved his wand to press against the command panel. It flashed gold, and the lift began its smooth ascent.

"My apologies," he said, the words slow and strangely heavy. Newt looked at him curiously, and he continued, "It was not my place to ask."

The front mirror dissolved away and Graves was walking out with his too-long strides before Newt was able to respond. He hurried to catch up.

The president's office was angular. Every surface was reflective in some way, with crisp corners and sharp edges and no trace of friendly knick-knacks or stray papers in sight. It was, if Newt was honest with himself, rather intimidating, what with the predominance of black and the precise gold edging. Somehow the light pouring in from the enormous windows only made the room seem darker in comparison, and the president herself was reduced to an ominous silhouette that may or may not be staring right at him, he really couldn't tell.

His mind withdrew from its background musings on doxies, and he frantically tried to think of any laws he'd broken recently that Tina might have forgotten to warn him about.

Or that she'd known full well he'd broken, but had disagreed with on moral grounds and therefore decided to remove them from her consciousness so as not to be complicit in illegal activities. It was hard to tell with Tina.

"Mr Scamander," Madam Picquery greeted. Her voice was soft and pleasant, and it made Newt straighten his spine to painful stiffness and try, as subtly as possible, to check his teeth for errant spinach.

Graves completely failed to stick around for moral support, even dubious support, and wandered over to one of the mirrored walls. He loitered there, dark gaze sitting heavy on Newt's back. It didn't help much.

"Madam President," he managed to say in a (mostly) even tone. "Good morning. Ah. Afternoon. To you."

She turned, her profile highlighted with unfair dramatic flair, and raised an eyebrow. Newt manfully refrained from apparating away.

"Good afternoon," she returned. "Mr Scamander, I've been led to believe that you have experience in dealing with magical beasts."

Well. That depended entirely how you defined dealing with, because New York's attitude towards beasts seemed decidedly hostile to the extent that Tina had originally thought he was writing a how-to manual for killing the poor things. Which. _No_. He did not have that sort of experience.

Thankfully, Picquery didn't wait for answer. "Something is killing my no-majs. I want it to stop."

"A totally understandable position," Newt agreed before he could stop himself.

Tina was going to be so unimpressed if he got deported the same day that she finally finished his paperwork.

Newt braced himself for another raised eyebrow, maybe a silencing hex or two, except that it didn't come. Instead, Picquery tilted her head towards him and allowed the corner of her mouth to quirk into a smile.

Somewhere in the background Graves' looming silence became decidedly choked, and Newt mentally awarded Hufflepuff a house point.

"I'm glad you think so," the president said. Graves had progressed from choking to leaning against a polished bookcase for support, would you look at that. "Your assistance in bringing the beast in would be greatly appreciated."

And that dawning horror on Graves, face, that must be worth another point - what?

"My assistance?" Newt repeated dumbly.

Picquery nodded, sweeping across the room with ridiculous quantities of elegance and grace to pick up a file from her desk. "The deaths aren't caused by spell work, nor any beast our auror department recognises. They have been attributed thus far to the obscurus, but their persistence after that creature's demise would suggest otherwise."

She held the file out to Newt and he took it, boggling both at her dismissal of Credence as a human being and at what she was asking him to do.

"You identified the obscurus with barely a glance at its effects," Picquery continued. "I am confident that your support would be valuable to this investigation."

Newt stared at the neat, quill-point type on the file. Then at the precise curl of hair over Picquery's right ear. Back at the file. He opened his mouth and closed it over the wheezing croak that wanted to come out.

Picquery stepped back and delivered the killing blow: "We would hope, of course, to capture and relocate the creature to a more suitable habitat, but our first priority must be our people and our ability to uphold the statute of secrecy."

She didn't elaborate further. She didn't need to elaborate further, Newt could read between the lines well enough.

"I find myself hoping the same," he said weakly, and with those six words resigned himself to protecting an unknown creature from over enthusiastic aurors with leeway to use lethal force on whichever hapless sod got in their way.

Perhaps, maybe, Tina would have preferred deportation?

"Excellent," Picquery smiled, a tighter and colder one than she'd given before. "Mr Graves will debrief you and introduce you to the team you'll be working with. Your expenses and salary will be drawn up shortly, and in the meantime I'm sure Mr Graves will answer any questions you may have." With a final nod, she glided (glided! What was she, part lethifold?) back to her desk and proceeded to ignore Newt's existance.

How would a part lethifold work? Could lethifolds interbreed with other species? They seemed to lack a certain tangibility that would usually be required. So probably not traditionally, Newt concluded, but magic was rarely a traditional process and -

A strong grip on his elbow brought him back to reality. Graves stared straight forward as he steered Newt around to face the door and began to march towards it, and Newt scrambled to keep pace.

The wait in the lift was in stony silence. Newt amused himself briefly by looking at things through the glass floor and making his eyes lose focus on them. The file was a heavy weight in his hand, and he decided that it was probably not in his best interest to ask Graves any questions, no matter what Madam President had said.

Five points from Hufflepuff, Scamander, for spinelessness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And bonus:
> 
> "Mr Scamander - "
> 
> "Fabulous day, flaming ball of gas in the sky, couldn't be happier it's there, don't you think?"  
> "Were you aware that the kripescle breeds in a cycle dictated by Venus?"  
> "- no no no no no come back please Dumbledore's going to _kill me_ \- "  
>  "Your soulmate wouldn't happen to unable to digest milk, by any chance?"  
> "This book is wrong. I am going to _eat_ this book. With my _teeth_."
> 
> "... Thank you, Mr Scamander. That will be all."


	3. Oh good, Graves' soulmate is assigned a dangerous case hunting an unknown hostile mere moments after Graves has met him. A fabulous day for Graves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Moving swiftly onto Graves' point of view. Look at the adorable little bucket of stress. _Look at him_

The auror department was tucked away in one of the less busy corners of MACUSA, where dangerous artifacts could be disarmed and loud duels could be practiced without bothering or endangering too many other people. The aurors themselves, of course, were expected to be fast enough with a shield charm to cope with the stray explosions that cropped up every now and then.

Usually, Graves appreciated the distance. The empty corridors, fading from MACUSA's stark grandeur to the auror department's spell-marked practicality, helped his mind settle. Usually.

Today, he did not settle. Today was about as far from a usual day as it was possible to get - and this coming from the auror with the highest arrest rate seen in the past hundred years. He'd dealt with his fair share of unusual. He'd also spent who the fuck knew how long slugging his way through endless shadows and damn mirror illusens in Grindelwald's cursed trap and that, that was enough 'unusual' to last him a fucking _lifetime_.

Shadows. That tried to eat him. What the fuck, Grindelwald.

So no, he wasn't settled. His soulmate was within touching distance of him and completely unaware of their connection because Graves' first words to him had been a thoroughly generic rendition of bland professionalism. Mr Scamander. Mr fucking Scamander. How many people had said that to the man over his life? Had he been hopeful, had he wondered whether each one was his destined other half? Had his hopes slowly been dashed each time they weren't, until he gave up looking and lived on in melancholic loneliness, all because Graves was a completely unimaginative bastard?

Newt had had precisely no reaction when Graves had said the words. Which was probably for the best; Graves, to him, was the man who had sentenced him to death - and done who knew what other damage. Tina hadn't exactly been forthcoming about what had happened, other than the dry minimum in her report.

(Girl took writing reports and turned it into an art form of barely suppressed sarcasm and righteous anger, and usually Graves enjoyed reading through the results, but not this time. Newt had faced both Grindelwald and the obscurial in a subway station; Newt had emerged with minor wounds. Grindelwald had been disarmed and incarcerated; the obscurus had been neutralised; the obscurial boy was the only casualty. A real gold-mine of information there.)

It hadn't seemed that important at the time but now Graves had a pressing need to learn exactly what had happened between his soulmate and the man who wore his face. Newt might know, intellectually, that Graves was not that man, but emotionally? And what he'd said, that first line, Merlin fucking wept that first line --

It was an effort to keep his agitation from showing, and he wasn't entirely sure he'd succeeded. With a mental shake he pushed the whole mess to the back of his mind. He had a case, he needed to focus on it.

"Delgado," he greeted in a clipped tone, stopping by the desk of one of his most reliable aurors. "What are you working on at the moment?"

The man sat straighter in his chair, pulling a stack of papers in front of him with a grimace. "Traffic," he said. "Misuse of apparation points and parking fines for ground-to-air transportation."

Graves paused, genuinely surprised at that. Delgado was an investigations and operations specialist, why on earth was he working as a traffic warden?

"Assignment came down a month ago, indefinite term," the man explained when he asked. And, at Graves' incredulous look, "I questioned. Multiple times."

Grindelwald. Fuck. Graves fought the urge to pinch his nose and wondered how many other good aurors had been shelved on time wasting jobs. "Remind me to check the personnel sheets, would you?" he said wearily. "And dump that. You're with me. _Traffic_ , what the hell. Pile of crap that is."

"Steaming horseshit," Delgado agreed and waved his papers off to the filing cabinet with an almost obscene pleasure. He nodded at Scamander, still hovering just behind Graves' shoulder. "Who's the rookie?"

"The rook - oh." Crap. Graves mentally rewound the conversation and tried to remember how many swear words he'd used and whether it would be considered morally dubious to obliviate one's soulmate. He then reminded himself that Newt probably wanted nothing to do with him and decided that proper language was enough of a trial to remember outside the auror department, he wasn't going to start watching his words inside it as well.

Newt smiled at him guilelessly and Graves turned away just a hair too fast to be casual. "Not a rookie," he said gruffly. "He's a specialist. Running assist on the case."

"Hi," Newt chirped, and waved. Bemused, Delgado waved back, though his wave was a great deal more restrained than Newt had managed.

The reminder that Newt had precisely no auror training was an unpleasant one. It wasn't Graves' place to question what the Madam President had decided and so he wouldn't, but he would like it known that he was making a conscious effort not to question a very questionable assignment. In an ideal world, he'd lock Newt in the office where it was safe and have him on research duties only, but somehow he didn't think that would work.

On second thoughts, most of the office had happily accepted Grindelwald lording it over them for the past month. The incompetence (or, though it pained Graves to think it, the corruption) required did not fill Graves with confidence, so he'd prefer to lock his soulmate somewhere else to keep him safe.

Graves stubbornly ignored the ridiculous thought that his house was warded to the nines and easily had enough space to accommodate a second person. Ridiculous. Soulmates didn't mean happy endings. Graves knows this.

Option two, of only allowing Newt in the field when Graves was available to accompany him, was therefore swiftly discarded. Graves would accompany when it served the case to do so, but there would be no mollycoddling on his watch.

"Goldstein come through recently?" he asked Delgado, settling for option three to ensure Newt's survival. There could be plenty of mollycoddling on Tina's watch, Graves wouldn't object to that.

"Still in records, last I checked."

Still? Was she trying to marry the paperwork? Graves waved his wand and sent his the silvery mastiff of his patronus to fetch her, already turning to make his way to his office. Once inside, he dealt with the most important thing first and grabbed the bucket-sized mug from his desk.

"Coffee?" he offered Newt.

"Don't take it," Delgado advised in a carrying stage-whisper. "Working theory pegs the stuff as leviathon blood."

Newt craned his neck to look over Graves' shoulder, fascinated. "How does he avoid the dissolving properties and hell-particles?" he asked with, as far as Grave could tell, complete seriousness.

"Well," Delgado said, face lighting up with the sort of glee reserved for finding a child who still believed that adults told the truth, "Working theory for that - "

Graves pointed at him rudely with his coffee. "Don't encourage him," he said. "Either of you. Do you want coffee or not?"

Newt looked disappointed. Fucker. "Tea, if you have it," he said, and he was so damn hopeful about it that Graves found himself scurrying off to find tea without ever giving his body permission to move. He procured generic black tea bags and absolutely did not make plans to discover Newt's preferred blend and stock it in his office.

When he returned Tina had joined the small group and Delgado was nursing a coffee of his own (milky, piss-weak stuff) with a satisfied expression. Newt squinted at Graves while he made the tea, politely refused milk but did add in three (three!) spoons of sugar, and generally proceeded to be weird and unnerving.

Graves sighed. "Scamander, don't believe things Delgado says when they're blatantly false," he said. "Delgado, don't tell Scamander things that are blatantly false because you think he'll believe them. And Delgado, Goldstein, I presume you know each other?"

They both nodded- and that was a really suspicious expression to go along with that nod Goldstein, what the hell - and Graves pulled the file that Newt had discarded on his desk towards him.

"Good. Consider yourselves introduced."

He rifled through the file for the photos he was after and set them hovering with a wave of his hand. There were five - two of them were known to be the obscurus' victims, unnaturally pale and drained with the distinctive blue veins the obscurus was known for clearly showing on their faces. Of the remaining three photos, the first showed a thin woman with mousy hair and a bright smear of paint across her lips. She was shrivelled, her eyes sunken and her cheeks hollowed. The effect was concentrated on her face, specifically around her mouth where the red paint stood in sharp contrast to her grey skin.

The second photo was again of a woman, her hair and skin bleached white. She had the same blue veins standing out on her face and neck as the obscurus' victims did, but post mortem analysis had showed she suffocated to death. If it weren't for the veins and the bleaching, the death would have been ruled non-magical and overlooked.

The third was a man, round faced with dark features. Of the three, he looked almost normal - except for the fact that the lines and cracks of the sidewalk were clearly visible through his semi-translucent body. The image wavered, the man oscillating between being mostly solid and all but see-through.

Newt stared at the photos, his usually expressive face shut down into a blank quesiness. Graves' stomach twisted in sympathy, but much as he would like to keep the man from the darker parts of life, he had a job to do.

"Listen up," he said, slipping into the familiar patterns of laying out the case. "These," he pointed at the first two photos, "were killed by the obscurus. We have eyewitness accounts for both describing the creature and significant property destruction in the immediate vicinity of the deaths." A sweep of his hand, and the two photos fixed themselves to the wall with black markers. "These," he gestured at the remaining three, "were assumed obscurus related, but are caused by an unknown assailant. We know it's not spellwork and we know it's not potions. We're looking for a creature or similar, one that targets no-majs. All three were killed at night with no witnesses, no sign of property destruction, no sign of theft or the bodies being harvested for ingredients." Another wave of his hand and a plan of New York rolled down from the ceiling. The photos flew to sit around the edge, threads of red light connecting each one to their location on the map.

"We're sure it's a creature, sir?" Tina asked. She gestured to the glowing spots on the map that marked where the victims were found. "These aren't exactly unpopulated areas, and we've had no reports of beast sightings recently." She paused, and corrected herself, "None that haven't already been dealt with." Newt shifted his weight and took a long drink from his mug, trying not to look guilty.

"Creature _or similar_ ," Graves stressed. "The obscurus wasn't a creature; it's possible this isn't either. Or these creatures - we could be looking at three unrelated crimes, but the situations are too similar to ignore a potential connection. Scamander," he turned to the magizoologist. "Ways a creature could avoid detection?"

"Uh," Newt startled, barely avoiding tea spilling down his front. Graves tried hard to smooth his face into something encouraging, but it wasn't an expression he was too familiar with. Tina, on the other hand, tilted her head and gave Newt a gentle smile, and Newt brightened just like that.

Unfair, Goldstein. Get your own soulmate.

"There's lots of ways," Newt began, hesitantly but building steam. "Invisibility's the obvious one, lots of creatures have some form of invisibility. Or disguise - there's shapeshifters, boggarts are just the start! There's a whole sub-genre of shape shifting creatures, or the more classic camouflage, _moving_ camouflage even with sound effects and  _smells_ , camouflage smells can you believe it? Uh. There's shadow creatures. Made of shadow, hiding in shadow, or just straight up living shadows. Or fliers! People never look up, you ever notice that? There can be the most amazing things in the sky, and people never even see them, or they could be hiding in the walls - what kind of sewer system do you have here? They could -"

Graves listened in mounting despair as Newt rattled through a seemingly endless list of ways that creatures could evade detection. Off to the side, Tina looked insufferably proud and Delgado's attempt at a professional demeanor had slipped into horrified awe.

Graves needed more coffee.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mental image of Delgado? Google Trevor Noah. Then go and watch his stand up because he's hilarious, but also, imagine this guy as a small chihuahua poking ~~Graves~~ things with a big stick to see how they'll react.
> 
> And, your bonus fic, because Vacilando wrote that Graves was having a minor aneurysm at the thought of Newt running around nyc with a dangerous beast on the loose:
> 
> Minor aneurysm? Minor? You're assuming that Graves does anything by halves. He does not. Why stop at a minor aneurysm when he can have a major one? Why stop there? Why stop at all? Why --
> 
> Give Graves back his coffee. Now. There will be hell.
> 
> And he is not having a nervous breakdown, so you can cancel that patronus Jenkins, the mediwitches won't be needed today. Also, if anyone so much as breathes a word of this to Newt, they can kiss their lungs goodbye because Graves will make sure they never breathe again


	4. ... Graves tried to be nice to salvage his day, but then he blew it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chaps and chapesses, **this used to be chapter five**. There was originally a chapter here with comment fic round-up; the comment-fics have since been moved to a separate fic (which should be linked from this one if I've done it correctly, if not go to Your words are a messy and illegible scrawl and you'll find everything there.)
> 
> Nothing else has changed, including the remainder of this first note which I've just moved across. Bam.
> 
> \--
> 
> All comments are answered! If I've missed anyone come shout at me for it. And yes, there are comment fics, but for now I won't post them in a new chapter because otherwise this story will end up as mostly comment fic chapters. You can either dive down through the comments for them, or come stalk me on tumblr where I have a Your words are ink tag that everything gets posted in. Eventually. Yusssss.

"Shit, man," Delgado summed up when Newt had finished his explanations. "Am I going to be tested on this? I forgot to take notes."

Tina elbowed him in the ribs. "Ass," she said, but her tone was somewhat lacking in recrimination. She'd missed this, dammit. Working in the auror department was neither glamorous nor easy, but it was what she did and she did it well. Had done it well, before she’d been relegated to wand permits. Would do it well again now that she was back. Whatever tense of the word ‘do’ you chose to use, Tina would ensure the adjective 'well' was applied.

"I have notes, if you want them," Newt offered, leaning forwards with wide eyes and a hopeful smile. "I even alphabetized them."

"What, seriously? Alphabetized?" The auror looked between Tina and Newt, eyebrows raised incredulously. "No wonder you two get on so well, you're both paperwork nuts. Hey Scamander, you ever feel like sorting parking fines?"

There was an ominous chinking from Graves' side of the room as he set his mug down on the desk, brows drawn low and eyes narrowed. Tina froze. Long buried survival instincts leapt to the fore and she wandlessly and silently cast a disillusion charm on herself and Newt. She didn't even know she could do wandless magic. In fact, she was pretty certain she couldn't. Usually. Apparently, imminent Death by Graves was all it took to kickstart her latent talents.

"Scamander," Graves rumbled - it was too quiet, Tina thought, to describe as 'thundered' but that was what the tone distinctly implied - "is not your secretary. He's a leading expert in his field and he's giving up valuable time to help the investigation." He fixed a shaking Delgado with a hard look. "Understood?"

"Prophetically!" Delgado blurted. Tina just stared. Graves made no move to look away, holding his glare until Delgado was reduced to a squirming wreck, one step away from gibbering in fear. About the time that even Newt started to fidget uncomfortably, Tina decided to throw caution to the wind and step in. She'd already been fired once and she'd crawled her way back from that, what was the worst that could happen?

"You know, I think that's the nicest thing you've ever said about someone," she said in a conversational tone. _Is it because he's your soulmate_ was the second half of the sentence that she didn't actually say out loud, because being fired was one thing but being set on fire was something entirely different and much harder to bounce out of. She was pretty good with a flame freezer, but Graves would probably anticipate that.

She did keep a sidelong eye on Newt though, because this was a hint, pay attention to this Newt it'll be important, Graves is trying to be nice. It might not look like it but this is _nice_ Graves and he's doing it for you.

Newt looked between the two of them with quick, agitated movements. "Thank you?" he said, voice rising on the last syllable and making it a question. "But I don't mind. I probably won't be any good at parking fines, but."

Graves swung his glare around to Newt, and no, bad Graves, this is not how you make your soulmate like you. _Stop_.

"But I'm a leading expert in my field and my time is valuable!" Newt squeaked in a hurried tumble of words, gaze darting frantically between Graves' coffee mug and the bookcase behind Delgado's right ear.

Graves nodded in satisfaction. "Exactly," he said. He relaxed from his Death Glare of Deathful Death (tm) and did a double take.

"Scamander - why are you disillusioned?"

"Um," Tina said.

"And why are you disillusioned _quite_ so badly?"

" _Um_." Wandless, wordless, and entirely accidental. And it was notoriously hard to disillusion someone else. Graves' judgement entirely ignored the context of the spell and was therefore unfairly harsh. Tina elected to ignore it.

Delgado elbowed her in her (mostly invisible) side. "How come you protected the pretty boy but not me?" he pouted.

Ladies and gentlemen, the auror department. MACUSA's brightest and best.

\---

"Goldstein," Graves said, over an hour later when they'd finally finished hashing out the first stages of the plan. "Stay behind a minute, would you?"

Tina squinted at him. He seemed calm, as calm as Graves ever got. His shoulders were relaxed. His coffee mug was full and steaming, but hadn't been refilled with excessive frequency over the course of the afternoon. He was messing about with the map, pulling the photos into better positions and securing the stick-it spells with something more permanent that would last through the week. All normal Graves behaviour. Nothing remotely suspicious in the way he tacked up Newt's shortlist of creature suspects and slotted it in to the crime wall. Nothing.

Tina was suspicious.

"Shoo," she said, flapping her hands at Newt when he lingered in the doorway. "I'll meet you at Queenie's, don't wait up for me." In the corner of her vision, Graves' jaw may or may not have tensed. Minutely. For a fraction of a second.

Suspicious.

"At Queenie's," Newt repeated, bobbing his head in an awkward nod. "Which I can apparate to from the apparition point. Which is in the main hall." Yes, well done Newt. Congratulations. Tina smiled encouragingly at him, but it didn't seem to have the desired effect. Newt shuffled in place, half in and half out of the door. "... I don't know where the main hall is," he admitted. "We're usually in the wand room place with the paperwork."

Oh. Oops.

"No worries man, I'll take you," Delgado said, clapping a friendly hand on Newt's shoulder. A sudden sense of doom flared from Graves' corner. Tina dived to intercept and bodily manhandled Newt and Delgado out the office before it could reach them.

"Fabulous, thank you, chop chop, _go_." She didn't quite slam the door behind them, but it was a near thing and Tina's nerves were dangerously close to frayed when she turned to face Graves.

"You," she said aggressively. "What the hell are you doing?"

Graves turned to face her, jaw set mulishly. "Goldstein, I'm your boss," he said, as if that changed anything.

"You're my best friend's soulmate and if you don't stop acting like a complete ass, you're going to hurt him!"

Silence.

Complete, frozen silence.

Even the pictures on the wall stopped moving. The still faces of Mary Lou Barebone and the no-maj senator that Credence had killed seemed to stare down at her in gleeful disapproval. Her breath seemed too bulky to fit through her throat, and her mouth opened as though she could take back the words she'd said and swallow them.

Graves withdrew into a careful blankness that Tina recognised from some of the worst cases they'd dealt with in the past. She flinched. She didn't even try to hide it. It was the blankness that said, Graves has emotions regarding this case that he does not want to have. It was the blankness that said, Graves doesn't trust himself to deal with this situation justly and fairly as his job requires.

It was the blankness that said, Graves is absent right now, the Law has the wheel, and the last person to put that look on Graves' face was the no-maj father of a first generation witch who'd begged to keep his daughter. He'd begged and she'd clung to him and refused to let go, and Graves had been - Graves had been compromised. He hadn't been able to continue working that case, but he hadn't wanted to inflict that decision on anyone else. So, Graves had retreated, the law had declared the no-maj be obliviated and the daughter placed with a suitable wizarding family, and it was done. There could be no interactions.

"Scamander is a civilian," Graves said, an even efficiency in every word. "He is also a resource that MACUSA would benefit from. His presence at the crime scenes is unavoidable if he is to be of maximum use to this investigation, but the Madame President will be displeased if he comes to harm."

"A resource," Tina whispered hoarsely. Graves continued as though she hadn't spoken.

"You have command of the field expedition this evening. Delgado will run backup. If you need additional time on the scene, request it through standard procedures." He waited just long enough for her to nod, then turned back to his desk. "Dismissed," he said, sitting straight in his chair and pulling a stack of files from one of the locked drawers. His coffee remained by the crime wall, rapidly going cold.

"You won't be with us this evening?" Tina asked, because the original plan had been two teams of two out in the field. She mentally cursed herself for asking as soon as she said it, because there wasn't any point. Delgado was running backup, she was keeping Newt alive, Graves was running scared from his soulmate. Why did she need to ask.

Graves didn't look up from the sheets laid out of his desk. "A dark lord infiltrated my city, Goldstein. I have other work." His hands stilled over a photo of a petty smuggler Grindelwald had sentenced to death. The girl in the photo bared her teeth at the camera, too-thin shoulders hunched forward and dirty tangles hiding her eyes from view. "I'm aware of your personal connection to Scamander, but I trust you will maintain an adequate level of discretion with non-pertinent information."

"It seems pretty pertinent to me."

He did look at her then, a dismissive flick of his eyes that judged her and found her petty and emotional. Tina's face burned but she kept it defiantly raised - not that it mattered when Graves turned back to his work with the same empty efficiency.

"Dismissed, Goldstein."

There was nothing else she could say. Tina had screwed up, and she couldn't fix it just then.

She left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... which is a heavy ending, so have a bonus to cheer you up:
> 
> Vacilando wrote:  
> Dont lie to me perce you totally gonna kit out your office with Newt's favourite everything. And Delgado and Tina's reaction to Newt just made me realise the wonderful possibility of the auror department being halfway professionally smitten with Newt's knowledge on Terrible Creatures That Can Kill You, Holy Shit Bro.
> 
>  
> 
> There's an issue with kitting out Graves' office with Newt's favourite everything. A major issue.
> 
> ... Graves doesn't know what it is, and he _forgot to ask Tina_. He was going to. Then other shit happened and he didn't, but the fuck man, how could you forget to ask, this is only your one perfect soulmate and the most precious little cinnamon roll in existence. All he wanted was a cup of tea. _What kind of monster are you._
> 
> Graves maybe panics. Graves maybe stravages around the auror department grabbing random passersby by their coat lapels and asking, desperately, frenzied, if they know anything about British tea habits. He gets several answers which range from _best thrown in the harbour_ (which, no, what if Newt heard this sort of talk? What if it made him sad? What if Newt got _offended_ by their sheer disrespect of tea and left and _never came back_?) to _I dunno man, I think Early Gray is a thing? Like, for early mornings?_ but none of them are useful answers. None.
> 
> Then word gets out that this is tea for That Terrifying English Bloke With The Creatures (Holy Shit Bro) and somehow, Graves' office ends up stocked with twenty eight kinds of tea and four different kinds of chocolate, because some of the aurors couldn't find tea but still thought it safer to make an offering and keep the Englishman happy.


	5. Congratulations, Graves, bad days are catching.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ladles and jellyspoons, if you think you've read chapter five before then think again, because by the old chapter counting **this would be chapter six**. Yes. I've completely mucked everything up, go me, and the comment fic interlude is pulled out into a separate work (with some new entries for you all you lovely things). Apologies for the confusion!
> 
> So: Comment fics are found in the comments (strange that) or in the new work _Your words are a messy and illegible scrawl_. Chapters match up, so comment fics on this chapter will appear in chapter 5 of that piece, handy dandy nice and easy. Some comment fics that are completely random and not related to _Your words are ink_ will be posted as oneshots or go in the big Fantastic Beasts drabble work to keep things just a bit streamlined.
> 
> Now, on with the show.
> 
> Also _edit_ because I've just started reading through the comments on the last chapter and _oh my god you guys are leaving me comment fics this is the most amazing thing ever and I LOVE YOU ALL_

It was in something of a numb daze that Tina got into the lift. She limply poked her wand against the control panel, so limply that it took two tries before the command registered and the metal cage rattled upwards. She left it, walked down the corridor to the next lift, and jabbed her wand blindly to the side again.

"Which floor?" the lift asked. Tina blinked, looking around herself as if surprised to see where she'd ended up. "I sad, which floor?"

It was the house elf - the atrium lifts were manned. Elved. She stowed her wand back up her sleeve and avoided looking at the slight scorch marks she'd left where she'd thought there was a control panel. "Sorry, main hall."

"Main hall," the elf repeated gruffly and sniffed at the state of her passenger. "Aurors. More time in the drink than is right for 'em, if anyone is asking me."

"We don't all drink," Tina protested. The scathing side eyed glare the house elf gave her said exactly what she thought of that, and didn't Newt say that in England house elves were unfailingly polite? And shy? He'd been delighted by the irreverent disdain of the MACUSA elves, but Tina couldn't help but think English elves would be nice. Occasionally. Maybe. She wasn't so sure about the slavery part Newt had described, but on the other hand, not being judged every time she stepped in the lift or ordered a shot at the bar. Would be nice.

"And you don't all take your latest fancies in their shiny frocks with you when you do, I gotcha miss Goldstein." The house elf tapped her elongated nose and gave what probably amounted to a knowing look.

"Latest fancies in their shiny frocks?" Delgado, don't let this be you. Things have not gone well and Tina needs to go home and hug Queenie until she's feeling like a stable human being again so for the love of all things legal, _don't let this be you._  "Would the shiny frock be a blue coat? And did the fancy have an English accent?"

The lift clattered to a stop in the atrium but the house elf paused before opening the door, thinking the question over. "Didn't speak much," she said. "And coats and frocks look all the same, but it was blue. Had a flower in the button hole and everything, though I prefer the ones with petals that don't talk, myself."

 Pickett. Which means Newt, which means, of course it's Delgado. And apparently the house elves thought Newt was a floozie in a frock, how nice. She sighed. "I'll get them," she said. "Thanks."

"As you wish," the house elf replied, waving her out and rattling shut the gate behind her. Tina pulled her coat tighter around herself and strode out, head down and focussed forwards in the universal language for _don't talk to me, I'll have to answer back and I'll hate you for the delay_. She turned into Murray Street and slipped through a nondescript door under a nondescript office block. The concrete service entrance faded away with a gentle shimmer as she stepped forward and the familiar wooden floors and low-hanging ceiling of the Dark Horse swam into existence. Delgado - and Newt - were slotted into one of the booths to the side, Delgado sprawled against the high-backed benches while Newt perched on the edge and inspected his glass the way he might a particularly poisonous horklump.

"Goldstein!" Delgado called, waving her over. "Hilberta passed the message on, good stuff. Boss joining us soon?"

Tina took a wild stab in the dark and guessed that Hilberta was the house elf, who had, in a roundabout way, passed the message on. Which meant that Delgado, in a roundabout way, was being _thoughtful_  by arranging a welcome-drinks to help Newt feel part of the team, and Tina couldn't just grab her wayward friend and apparate home to Queenie. _Lovely_.

She slid into the booth next to Newt and flicked her order over to the bar. The glowing ball zipped over to hover by the gin bottle - oops, Tina had meant to order a beer - until the barman collected it and floated the drink back over to her. She'd stay for one drink. One.

"He's not coming," she said apologetically. "Something came up."

Delgado made a face. "Something always comes up. He's going to work himself to death if he doesn't give himself a break. No, wait, he'll work himself to an early _grave_ , hah."

"That," Newt said, "was an appalling joke."

"Those are the only kind Delgado knows, don't mind him." Although, he was right. Since Grindelwald, since everything that had happened, Graves was pushing himself harder than he could afford to. Something was going to break. Hell, maybe something already had and Tina had been the one to do it, who could say.

Delgado leant back, putting a dramatic hand to his chest. "Ouch, Goldstein," he said in a mock-wounded voice. "Who hurt you?"

She shook her head and pulled herself together. Moping later. Now, gin, welcome drinks for Newt - which actually wasn't a bad idea, though she couldn't help but think a tea shop would've been a better place - and sorting out the case for the evening. "Sorry, heavy day. Graves is sitting this one out, it's just the three of us this evening. Delgado, you're running backup; Newt, you and I are out front. We go down the alleys and search for traces of whatever creature this is, and if we see it active we defend the no-majs _without_  engaging the creature. Not until we know more about it."

Newt frowned hesitantly. "We shouldn't need backup," he said. "There's remarkably few occasions when throwing _more_  people at a distressed creature will help it calm down, particularly if they come running with their wands drawn."

"You mean you don't run at it with your wand out?" Delgado asked. "What, you have an invisibility cloak or something and sneak up?"

Newt shifted his shoulder so that Pickett's pocket was turned away and shot Delgado a sour look. "I find wands are usually unnecessary."

"Yeah, for the little things maybe but this could be -"

"He has a nundu," Tina interjected, because Newt would absolutely one hundred percent go up against a _dragon_  with just his hands out. She wasn't entirely sure how good his wandless magic was or whether he just preferred to duck, but either way, Delgado was underestimating quite how crazily reckless Newt could be. "He keeps it in his suitcase and calls it Adelaide."

Delgado stares. Newt shuffles in his seat and tries an awkward smile.

"Holy shit, bro. A nundu?" He shook his head. "Man, maybe he's right. Doesn't sound like you'll be needing backup, no sir. I'll just take the evening off, yeah?" Tina kicked him under the table. She didn't do it hard, but he pouted at her for it, the big baby.

"Why can't we all three go?" Newt asked. "More eyes are better, aren't they?" He looked at Tina quizzically, confused when she shook her head.

"There are too many ways to take down a whole group," she said. "Atmosphere potions, ward nets, even just a good ambush - you need someone behind keeping track. Delgado, stay on backup and stop trying to shirk; we'll live-stream you the data we find, standard dictaquill recording. How's your artifact handling?"

He sat up straighter, glancing mournfully at his half drunk pint. Tina squashed a bit of sympathy; she wasn't being sociable, she knew that, and he'd probably been hoping for a while longer on the drinking stage before they got down to work. She just... At the moment, she couldn't be sociable, because how the _hell_  was she supposed to not tell Newt quite how phenomenally screwed up the whole soulmate thing was. Tina needed to talk to Queenie before she got anywhere near that conversation.

"Adequate," he said. "You're sending them through the vanishing boxes?"

"Them?" Newt interrupted. "The creatures?"

"Creatures, traces, memory-photos, anything we collect." She paused at his unhappy expression. "We use them all the time," she assured him. "They're linked and warded, no one can interfere with anything travelling between the two boxes. The one Delgado will be using is fixed in the auror department, no one could steal it if they wanted to."

"No, it's not - _creatures_? Through vanishing boxes?"

Not good? They never seemed hurt when they came out the other side, but MACUSA was usually concerned with capturing and terminating rather than preserving, so no one had really checked. Tina was gathering though from Newt that it was probably not good. No wait, he'd started trying to shield the Pickett pocket again, and he was holding his swooping evil sleeve remarkably close to his body. The vanishing boxes were edging into Downright Awful territory. Ahhhh damn, that'd be a whole load more paperwork to sort out to organise for the practice to be stopped. Newt. Why do you do this. Newt, why.

"You're the consulting professional," she sighed. "You can decide how the creatures are handled if we come across them. _But_ , and this is an important but, we're not meant to engage unless there's lives at stake, yes? Observe and gather evidence, Newt. We're doing this the auror way for once."

Delgado snorted. "Chaos and mayhem, hooray."

She glared at him. Newt, on the other hand, favoured Delgado with a conspiratorial smile, and confessed that "Most of my plans end up like that as well, it's why I rarely bother with them anymore."

"You," Delgado pointed. "I like you."

Newt beamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at Tina being a competent auror person. How weird is that.
> 
> Your bonus fic for this week is kinda long and kinda a separate work and kinda already posted a few days ago but I wrote it for you guys and then it kinda got out of hand. Oops. So it's a bit long for this comment and instead please mosey on over to [Five Kisses](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8837263) if you haven't read it already, for the grand fantasbulousness that is Graves and Newt's inability to actually admit their feelings for each other, Tina losing patience with the pair of them, and Delgado founding a fan club for That Terrifying Englishman Holy Shit Bro. I'm _pretty_ sure that it's complete crack, but let's go for it.
> 
> (running through the comments now, if I get another thing that will work for the bonus I'll add it in here for you guys)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Fantastic Things and how to keep track of them](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8688994) by [nonamemanga](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonamemanga/pseuds/nonamemanga)
  * [Your words are a messy and illegible scrawl](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8869021) by [Aethelar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aethelar/pseuds/Aethelar)




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